Thayer team redesigns solar tech.

The Dartmouth

February 9, 2012

By Kira Witkins

Researchers at the Thayer School of Engineering are pursuing a full patent for solar energy technology that makes future dependence on renewable resources more realistic, according to engineering professor Jifeng Liu, who led the research team.

The group — which included Liu, Haofeng Li Th ’15 and Thayer research scientist Xiaoxin Wang — has developed a process to create less expensive solar cells that are up to twice as efficient as the current technology, according to Liu.

Because current methods can harness only a “very small portion” of solar energy, amounting to less than 10 percent, the team’s findings could be “groundbreaking” in the field of renewable energy studies, Li said.

“The sun gives so much energy,” he said. “If we could find a way to utilize it in an efficient way, that would be important.”

The high cost of solar panels, which the researchers aim to reduce, is the main obstacle preventing mass-production of solar energy technology, Liu said.

“Your dollars per watt of electricity by solar [energy] could become comparable to the fossil fuels,” Liu said. “So this is basically for the long-term sustainability of our society in the world.”

By manufacturing single crystal-thin films — made of compounds and elements like gallium arsenide, silicon and germanium — directly on large surface areas of amorphous substrates like everyday glass, the method cuts the cost of solar energy that would otherwise depend on crystalline silicon solar cells, according to an article published by Global Solar Technology.

In July, Chaudhari invited scientists from the nation’s top universities to collaborate on a project that continued the research of his late father, Praveen Chaudhari. Dartmouth was the only university to respond within a few months, Chaudhari said.

“I was expecting a positive outcome, but I didn’t expect such a positive outcome,” Chaudhari said. “I really think that it’s going to be a breakthrough technology, and by that I mean that it will become the solar cell technology in the market, the one that will be used more than any other — the dominant technology.”

The research group, which began the development process in August, filed for a provisional patent last month and is currently in the process of applying for a full patent, according to Liu.

Future collaboration between Solar-Tectic and Thayer is possible, particularly given the strength of Dartmouth’s entrepreneurial resources, Chaudhari said.